The Watchman On The Wall

Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Verse 13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

The country
of Edom was founded by Jacob's brother Esau. He picked up the nickname
"Edom" or "Red" when he sold half of his massive
inheritance for a simple bowl of red bean stew.

Edom was located in the region to the southeast of
Israel. Mount Seir was a notable landmark in this region.

Edom and Israel, the people who descended from Jacob,
never got along with each other. Skirmishes between the people happened often.
Edom never got over its hatred of Israel. "Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom the day
of Jerusalem, who said, "Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation!""
(Psalm 137:7). In other
words, Edom was cheering the Babylonians on. When Israel fell because of their
sins, Edom rejoiced at its fall and took the opportunity to raid the country.
They even helped the Babylonians collect the stragglers left from the war (Obadiah 10-15).

In delivering punishments to various nations, we learn
that God often turns the sin against the sinner. Edom rejoiced at the emptying
of Israel and five years later, Nebuchadnezzar swept through again, destroying
several nations and emptying their lands -- including Edom. Here is what God
promised Edom:

"Thus says the Lord GOD:
"Behold, O Mount Seir, I am against you; I will stretch out My hand
against you, And make you most desolate; I shall lay your cities waste, And you
shall be desolate. Then you shall know that I am the LORD. Because you have had
an ancient hatred, and have shed the blood of the children of Israel by the
power of the sword at the time of their calamity, when their iniquity came to
an end, therefore, as I live," says the Lord GOD, "I will prepare you
for blood, and blood shall pursue you; since you have not hated blood,
therefore blood shall pursue you. Thus I will make Mount Seir most desolate,
and cut off from it the one who leaves and the one who returns. And I will fill
its mountains with the slain; on your hills and in your valleys and in all your
ravines those who are slain by the sword shall fall. I will make you
perpetually desolate, and your cities shall be uninhabited; then you shall know
that I am the LORD" (Ezekiel 35:3-9).

God promised that travelers would no longer pass that
way; the country would be so littered with slain that people would avoid the
stench. But most importantly, God states that the country would never be
rebuilt. Just as Edom had perpetual hatred for Israel, their country would
remain perpetually empty.

That has remained basically true. Various countries have
controlled the territory that was once Edom, but Edom as a nation disappeared.
When the edict was made allowing people to return to the homelands, Israel and
many other countries rebuilt, but Edom never did. During the time of the Greeks
and Romans, the region was known as Idumea, which is the Greek transliteration
of Edom. The territory is currently controlled by Jordan. I find it interesting that ISIS terrorists trained in Jordan under U.S. supervision!

Above, Syrians treat "alleged" Sarin victims without protective clothing. Protective gloves and clothing are a must in treating Sarin victims.

President Donald Trump ignored important
intelligence reports when he decided to attack Syria after he saw pictures of
dying children. Seymour M. Hersh investigated the case of the alleged Sarin gas
attack.

On April
6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk
missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he
said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two
days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order
despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found
no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.

The
available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist
meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with
conventional explosives. Details of the attack, including information on
its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in
advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to
coordinate all U.S., allied, Syrian and Russian Air Force operations in the
region.

Some
American military and intelligence officials were especially distressed by the
president's determination to ignore the evidence. "None of this makes any
sense," one officer told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb.
"We KNOW that there was no chemical attack ... the Russians are furious.
Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth ... I guess it didn't matter
whether we elected Clinton or Trump.“

Within
hours of the April 4 bombing, the world’s media was saturated with photographs
and videos from Khan Sheikhoun. Pictures of dead and dying victims, allegedly
suffering from the symptoms of nerve gas poisoning, were uploaded to social
media by local activists, including the White Helmets, a first responder group
known for its close association with the terrorists.

The
provenance of the photos was not clear and no international observers have yet
inspected the site, but the immediate popular assumption worldwide was that
this was a deliberate use of the nerve agent sarin, authorized by President
Bashar Assad of Syria. Trump endorsed that assumption by issuing a statement
within hours of the attack, describing Assad’s "heinous actions" as
being a consequence of the Obama administration’s "weakness and
irresolution" in addressing what he said was Syria’s past use of chemical
weapons.

To the
dismay of many senior members of his national security team, Trump could not be
swayed over the next 48 hours of intense briefings and decision-making. In a
series of interviews, I learned of the total disconnect between the president
and many of his military advisers and intelligence officials, as well as
officers on the ground in the region who had an entirely different
understanding of the nature of Syria’s attack on Khan Sheikhoun. I was provided
with evidence of that disconnect, in the form of transcripts of real-time
communications, immediately following the Syrian attack on April 4. In an important
pre-strike process known as de-confliction, U.S. and Russian officers routinely
supply one another with advance details of planned flight paths and target
coordinates, to ensure that there is no risk of collision or accidental
encounter (the Russians speak on behalf of the Syrian military). This
information is supplied daily to the American AWACS surveillance planes that
monitor the flights once airborne. De-confliction’s success and importance can
be measured by the fact that there has yet to be one collision, or even a near
miss, among the high-powered supersonic American, Allied, Russian and Syrian
fighter bombers.

Russian
and Syrian Air Force officers gave details of the carefully planned flight path
to and from Khan Shiekhoun on April 4 directly, in English, to the
de-confliction monitors aboard the AWACS plane, which was on patrol near the
Turkish border, 60 miles or more to the north.

The
Syrian target at Khan Sheikhoun, as shared with the Americans at Doha, was
depicted as a two-story cinder-block building in the northern part of town.
Russian intelligence, which is shared when necessary with Syria and the U.S. as
part of their joint fight against jihadist groups, had established that a
high-level meeting of jihadist leaders was to take place in the building,
including representatives of Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Qaida-affiliated group
formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. The two groups had recently joined forces,
and controlled the town and surrounding area. Russian intelligence depicted the
cinder-block building as a command and control center that housed a grocery and
other commercial premises on its ground floor with other essential shops
nearby, including a fabric shop and an electronics store.

"The
rebels control the population by controlling the distribution of goods that
people need to live – food, water, cooking oil, propane gas, fertilizers for
growing their crops, and insecticides to protect the crops," a senior
adviser to the American intelligence community, who has served in senior positions
in the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, told me. The
basement was used as storage for rockets, weapons and ammunition, as well as
products that could be distributed for free to the community, among them
medicines and chlorine-based de-contaminants for cleansing the bodies of the
dead before burial. The meeting place – a regional headquarters – was on the
floor above. “It was an established meeting place,” the senior adviser said. “A
long-time facility that would have had security, weapons, communications, files
and a map center.” The Russians were intent on confirming their intelligence
and deployed a drone for days above the site to monitor communications and
develop what is known in the intelligence community as a POL – a pattern of life.
The goal was to take note of those going in and out of the building, and to
track weapons being moved back and forth, including rockets and ammunition.

One
reason for the Russian message to Washington about the intended target was to
ensure that any CIA asset or informant who had managed to work his way into the
jihadist leadership was forewarned not to attend the meeting. I was told that
the Russians passed the warning directly to the CIA. “They were playing the
game right,” the senior adviser said. The Russian guidance noted that the
jihadist meeting was coming at a time of acute pressure for the insurgents:
Presumably Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham were desperately seeking a path
forward in the new political climate. In the last few days of March, Trump and
two of his key national security aides – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and
UN Ambassador Nikki Haley – had made statements acknowledging that, as the New
York Times put it, the White House “has abandoned the goal” of
pressuring Assad "to leave power, marking a sharp departure from the
Middle East policy that guided the Obama administration for more than five
years.” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told a press briefing on March
31 that “there is a political reality that we have to accept,” implying that
Assad was there to stay.

Russian
and Syrian intelligence officials, who coordinate operations closely with the
American command posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun
was special because of the high-value target. “It was a red-hot change. The
mission was out of the ordinary – scrub the sked,” the senior adviser told me.
“Every operations officer in the region" – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air
Force, CIA and NSA – “had to know there was something going on. The Russians
gave the Syrian Air Force a guided bomb and that was a rarity. They’re skimpy
with their guided bombs and rarely share them with the Syrian Air Force. And
the Syrians assigned their best pilot to the mission, with the best wing man.”
The advance intelligence on the target, as supplied by the Russians, was given
the highest possible score inside the American community.

The
Execute Order governing U.S. military operations in theater, which was issued
by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provide instructions that
demarcate the relationship between the American and Russian forces operating in
Syria. “It’s like an ops order – ‘Here’s what you are authorized to do,’” the
adviser said. “We do not share operational control with the Russians. We don’t
do combined operations with them, or activities directly in support of one of
their operations. But coordination is permitted. We keep each other
apprised of what’s happening and within this package is the mutual exchange of
intelligence. If we get a hot tip that could help the Russians do their
mission, that’s coordination; and the Russians do the same for us. When we get
a hot tip about a command and control facility,” the adviser added, referring
to the target in Khan Sheikhoun, “we do what we can to help them act on
it." “This was not a chemical weapons strike,” the adviser said. “That’s a
fairy tale. If so, everyone involved in transferring, loading and arming the
weapon – you’ve got to make it appear like a regular 500-pound conventional
bomb – would be wearing Hazmat protective clothing in case of a leak. There
would be very little chance of survival without such gear. Military grade sarin
includes additives designed to increase toxicity and lethality. Every batch
that comes out is maximized for death. That is why it is made. It is odorless
and invisible and death can come within a minute. No cloud. Why produce a
weapon that people can run away from?”

The
target was struck at 6:55 a.m. on April 4, just before midnight in Washington.
A Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military later determined that the
heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered a series of
secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to
spread over the town, formed by the release of the fertilizers, disinfectants
and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense
morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground. According to
intelligence estimates, the senior adviser said, the strike itself killed up to
four jihadist leaders, and an unknown number of drivers and security aides.
There is no confirmed count of the number of civilians killed by the poisonous
gases that were released by the secondary explosions, although opposition
activists reported that there were more than 80 dead, and outlets such as CNN
have put the figure as high as 92. A team from Médecins Sans Frontières,
treating victims from Khan Sheikhoun at a clinic 60 miles to the north,
reported that “eight patients showed symptoms – including constricted pupils,
muscle spasms and involuntary defecation – which are consistent with exposure
to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar compounds.” MSF also visited
other hospitals that had received victims and found that patients there
“smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.” In
other words, evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical
responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if
the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin
bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary
explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a
mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many
fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.

The
internet swung into action within hours, and gruesome photographs of the
victims flooded television networks and YouTube. U.S. intelligence was tasked
with establishing what had happened. Among the pieces of information received
was an intercept of Syrian communications collected before the attack by an
allied nation. The intercept, which had a particularly strong effect on some of
Trump’s aides, did not mention nerve gas or sarin, but it did quote a Syrian
general discussing a “special” weapon and the need for a highly skilled pilot
to man the attack plane. The reference, as those in the American intelligence
community understood, and many of the inexperienced aides and family members
close to Trump may not have, was to a Russian-supplied bomb with its built-in
guidance system. “If you’ve already decided it was a gas attack, you will then
inevitably read the talk about a special weapon as involving a sarin bomb,” the
adviser said. “Did the Syrians plan the attack on Khan Sheikhoun? Absolutely.
Do we have intercepts to prove it? Absolutely. Did they plan to use sarin? No.
But the president did not say: ‘We have a problem and let’s look into it.’ He
wanted to bomb the shit out of Syria.”

At the
UN the next day, Ambassador Haley created a media sensation when she displayed
photographs of the dead and accused Russia of being complicit. “How many more
children have to die before Russia cares?” she asked. NBC News, in a typical
report that day, quoted American officials as confirming that nerve gas had
been used and Haley tied the attack directly to Syrian President Assad.
"We know that yesterday’s attack was a new low even for the barbaric Assad
regime,” she said. There was irony in America's rush to blame Syria and
criticize Russia for its support of Syria's denial of any use of gas in Khan
Sheikhoun, as Ambassador Haley and others in Washington did. "What doesn't
occur to most Americans" the adviser said, "is if there had been a
Syrian nerve gas attack authorized by Bashar, the Russians would be 10 times as
upset as anyone in the West. Russia’s strategy against ISIS, which involves
getting American cooperation, would have been destroyed and Bashar would be
responsible for pissing off Russia, with unknown consequences for him. Bashar
would do that? When he’s on the verge of winning the war? Are you kidding me?”

Trump,
a constant watcher of television news, said, while King Abdullah of Jordan was
sitting next to him in the Oval Office, that what had happened was “horrible,
horrible” and a “terrible affront to humanity.” Asked if his administration
would change its policy toward the Assad government, he said: “You will see.”
He gave a hint of the response to come at the subsequent news conference with
King Abdullah: “When you kill innocent children, innocent babies – babies,
little babies – with a chemical gas that is so lethal ... that crosses
many, many lines, beyond a red line . ... That attack on children yesterday had
a big impact on me. Big impact ... It’s very, very possible ... that my
attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”

Within
hours of viewing the photos, the adviser said, Trump instructed the national
defense apparatus to plan for retaliation against Syria. “He did this before he
talked to anybody about it. The planners then asked the CIA and DIA if there
was any evidence that Syria had sarin stored at a nearby airport or somewhere
in the area. Their military had to have it somewhere in the area in order to
bomb with it.” “The answer was, ‘We have no evidence that Syria had sarin or
used it,’” the adviser said. “The CIA also told them that there was no residual
delivery for sarin at Sheyrat [the airfield from which the Syrian SU-24 bombers
had taken off on April 4] and Assad had no motive to commit political suicide.”
Everyone involved, except perhaps the president, also understood that a highly
skilled United Nations team had spent more than a year in the aftermath of an
alleged sarin attack in 2013 by Syria, removing what was said to be all
chemical weapons from a dozen Syrian chemical weapons depots.

At this
point, the adviser said, the president’s national security planners were more
than a little rattled: “No one knew the provenance of the photographs. We
didn’t know who the children were or how they got hurt. Sarin actually is very
easy to detect because it penetrates paint, and all one would have to do is get
a paint sample. We knew there was a cloud and we knew it hurt people. But you
cannot jump from there to certainty that Assad had hidden sarin from the UN
because he wanted to use it in Khan Sheikhoun.” The intelligence made clear
that a Syrian Air Force SU-24 fighter bomber had used a conventional weapon to
hit its target: There had been no chemical warhead. And yet it was impossible
for the experts to persuade the president of this once he had made up his mind.
“The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an
Assad atrocity,” the senior adviser said. “It’s typical of human nature. You
jump to the conclusion you want. Intelligence analysts do not argue with a
president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data
this way, I quit.’”

The
national security advisers understood their dilemma: Trump wanted to respond to
the affront to humanity committed by Syria and he did not want to be dissuaded.
They were dealing with a man they considered to be not unkind and not stupid,
but his limitations when it came to national security decisions were severe.
"Everyone close to him knows his proclivity for acting precipitously when
he does not know the facts," the adviser said. "He doesn’t read
anything and has no real historical knowledge. He wants verbal briefings and
photographs. He’s a risk-taker. He can accept the consequences of a bad
decision in the business world; he will just lose money. But in our world,
lives will be lost and there will be long-term damage to our national security
if he guesses wrong. He was told we did not have evidence of Syrian involvement
and yet Trump says: 'Do it.”’

On
April 6, Trump convened a meeting of national security officials at his
Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The meeting was not to decide what to do, but how
best to do it – or, as some wanted, how to do the least and keep Trump happy.
“The boss knew before the meeting that they didn’t have the intelligence, but
that was not the issue,” the adviser said. “The meeting was about, ‘Here’s what
I’m going to do,' and then he gets the options.”

The
available intelligence was not relevant. The most experienced man at the table
was Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who had
the president’s respect and understood, perhaps, how quickly that could
evaporate. Mike Pompeo, the CIA director whose agency had consistently reported
that it had no evidence of a Syrian chemical bomb, was not present. Secretary
of State Tillerson was admired on the inside for his willingness to work long
hours and his avid reading of diplomatic cables and reports, but he knew little
about waging war and the management of a bombing raid. Those present were in a
bind, the adviser said. “The president was emotionally energized by the
disaster and he wanted options.” He got four of them, in order of extremity.
Option one was to do nothing. All involved, the adviser said, understood that
was a non-starter. Option two was a slap on the wrist: to bomb an airfield in
Syria, but only after alerting the Russians and, through them, the Syrians, to
avoid too many casualties. A few of the planners called this the “gorilla
option”: America would glower and beat its chest to provoke fear and demonstrate
resolve, but cause little significant damage. The third option was to adopt the
strike package that had been presented to Obama in 2013, and which he
ultimately chose not to pursue. The plan called for the massive bombing of the
main Syrian airfields and command and control centers using B1 and B52 aircraft
launched from their bases in the U.S. Option four was “decapitation”: to remove
Assad by bombing his palace in Damascus, as well as his command and control
network and all of the underground bunkers he could possibly retreat to in a
crisis.

“Trump
ruled out option one off the bat,” the senior adviser said, and the
assassination of Assad was never considered. “But he said, in essence: ‘You’re
the military and I want military action.’” The president was also initially
opposed to the idea of giving the Russians advance warning before the strike,
but reluctantly accepted it. “We gave him the Goldilocks option – not too hot,
not too cold, but just right.” The discussion had its bizarre moments. Tillerson
wondered at the Mar-a-Lago meeting why the president could not simply call in
the B52 bombers and pulverize the air base. He was told that B52s were very
vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) in the area and using such planes
would require suppression fire that could kill some Russian defenders.
“What is that?” Tillerson asked. Well, sir, he was told, that means we
would have to destroy the upgraded SAM sites along the B52 flight path, and
those are manned by Russians, and we possibly would be confronted with a much
more difficult situation. “The lesson here was: Thank God for the military men
at the meeting,” the adviser said. "They did the best they could when
confronted with a decision that had already been made."

Fifty-nine
Tomahawk missiles were fired from two U.S. Navy destroyers on duty in the
Mediterranean, the Ross and the Porter, at Shayrat
Air Base near the government-controlled city of Homs. The strike was as
successful as hoped, in terms of doing minimal damage. The missiles have a
light payload – roughly 220 pounds of HBX, the military’s modern version of
TNT. The airfield’s gasoline storage tanks, a primary target, were pulverized,
the senior adviser said, triggering a huge fire and clouds of smoke that
interfered with the guidance system of following missiles. As many as 24
missiles missed their targets and only a few of the Tomahawks actually
penetrated into hangars, destroying nine Syrian aircraft, many fewer than
claimed by the Trump administration. I was told that none of the nine was
operational: such damaged aircraft are what the Air Force calls hangar queens.
“They were sacrificial lambs,” the senior adviser said. Most of the important
personnel and operational fighter planes had been flown to nearby bases hours
before the raid began. The two runways and parking places for aircraft, which
had also been targeted, were repaired and back in operation within eight hours
or so. All in all, it was little more than an expensive fireworks display.

“It was
a totally Trump show from beginning to end,” the senior adviser said. “A few of
the president’s senior national security advisers viewed the mission as a
minimized bad presidential decision, and one that they had an obligation to
carry out. But I don’t think our national security people are going to allow
themselves to be hustled into a bad decision again. If Trump had gone for option
three, there might have been some immediate resignations.”

After
the meeting, with the Tomahawks on their way, Trump spoke to the nation from
Mar-a-Lago, and accused Assad of using nerve gas to choke out “the lives of
helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many
... No child of God should ever suffer such horror.” The next few days were his
most successful as president. America rallied around its commander in chief, as
it always does in times of war. Trump, who had campaigned as someone who
advocated making peace with Assad, was bombing Syria 11 weeks after taking
office, and was hailed for doing so by Republicans, Democrats and the media
alike. One prominent TV anchorman, Brian Williams of MSNBC, used the word
“beautiful” to describe the images of the Tomahawks being launched at sea.
Speaking on CNN, Fareed Zakaria said: “I think Donald Trump became president of
the United States.” A review of the top 100 American newspapers showed that 39
of them published editorials supporting the bombing in its aftermath, including
the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall
Street Journal.

Five
days later, the Trump administration gathered the national media for a
background briefing on the Syrian operation that was conducted by a senior
White House official who was not to be identified. The gist of the briefing was
that Russia’s heated and persistent denial of any sarin use in the Khan
Sheikhoun bombing was a lie because President Trump had said sarin had been
used. That assertion, which was not challenged or disputed by any of the
reporters present, became the basis for a series of further criticisms:

- The continued lying by the Trump administration about Syria’s use of sarin
led to widespread belief in the American media and public that
Russia had chosen to be involved in a corrupt disinformation and cover-up
campaign on the part of Syria.

- Russia’s military forces had been co-located with Syria’s at the Shayrat
airfield (as they are throughout Syria), raising the possibility that Russia
had advance notice of Syria’s determination to use sarin at Khan Sheikhoun and
did nothing to stop it.

- Syria’s use of sarin and Russia’s defense of that use strongly suggested that
Syria withheld stocks of the nerve agent from the UN disarmament team that
spent much of 2014 inspecting and removing all declared chemical warfare agents
from 12 Syrian chemical weapons depots, pursuant to the agreement worked out by
the Obama administration and Russia after Syria’s alleged, but still unproven,
use of sarin the year before against a rebel redoubt in a suburb of Damascus.

The
briefer, to his credit, was careful to use the words “think,” “suggest” and
“believe” at least 10 times during the 30-minute event. But he also said that
his briefing was based on data that had been declassified by “our colleagues in
the intelligence community.” What the briefer did not say, and may not have
known, was that much of the classified information in the community made the
point that Syria had not used sarin in the April 4 bombing attack.

The
mainstream press responded the way the White House had hoped it would: Stories
attacking Russia’s alleged cover-up of Syria’s sarin use dominated the news and
many media outlets ignored the briefer’s myriad caveats. There was a sense of
renewed Cold War. The New York Times, for example – America’s
leading newspaper – put the following headline on its account: “White House
Accuses Russia of Cover-Up in Syria Chemical Attack.” The Times’
account did note a Russian denial, but what was described by the briefer as
“declassified information” suddenly became a “declassified intelligence
report.” Yet there was no formal intelligence report stating that Syria had
used sarin, merely a "summary based on declassified information about the
attacks," as the briefer referred to it.

The
crisis slid into the background by the end of April, as Russia, Syria and the
United States remained focused on annihilating ISIS and the terrorists of
al-Qaida. Some of those who had worked through the crisis, however, were left
with lingering concerns. “The Salafists and jihadists got everything they
wanted out of their hyped-up Syrian nerve gas ploy,” the senior adviser to the
U.S. intelligence community told me, referring to the flare up of tensions between
Syria, Russia and America. “The issue is, what if there’s another false flag
sarin attack credited to hated Syria? Trump has upped the ante and painted
himself into a corner with his decision to bomb. And do not think these guys
are not planning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb
again, and harder. He’s incapable of saying he made a mistake.”

The
White House did not answer specific questions about the bombing of Khan
Sheikhoun and the airport of Shayrat. These questions were send via e-mail to
the White House on June 15 and never answered.

Israel had insisted
that they had exclusively targeted military targets, saying they’d destroyed an
“ammunition truck” and artillery positions, along with attacking a tank inside
Syria. This is a fairly common reaction to stray shells by Israel, which has repeatedly
attacked the Syrian military over the course of the protracted war within the
country.

Israel is known to be providing
substantial amounts of aid to rebels in this area of Syria,
including some Islamist-leaning groups. It has never been confirmed that Nusra
was among those getting supported by Israel, however it has been speculated by
Syria that this might be the case, and Israel has accepted wounded
al-Qaeda fighters crossing into Syria for treatment.

Late last week, Qatar
received a list of 13 demands from Saudi Arabia and the other Arab nations
involved in blockading them, and has been warned by the Saudi kingdom that they have just 10 days to
unconditionally accept all of them, or face unspecified further action.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry has issued a statement today insisting the
list of demands is unreasonable.

The demands include
Qatar agreeing to shut down every one of its media outlets, including the
influential al-Jazeera, permanently, agree to pay an unspecified fine to the
Saudis, close several foreign diplomatic posts that the Saudis don’t want them
to have, and to expel the Turkish military from a base on the peninsula.

This list follows a
10-demand list from the Saudis which was rejected out of hand, and let the US
to call for a “reasonable” list of demands, and Britain urged it to be
“realistic.” Qatar insists they don’t think the new list is either, but rather
an even bigger attack on their sovereignty than the last list was.

The US State
Department has insisted Qatar is “reviewing” the demands, but Secretary of
State Tillerson, who’d initially called for reasonable, actionable demands, conceded it
would be very difficult for Qatar to even conceivably meet some of the demand.
He urged the nations to sit down and negotiate a compromise agreement, which is
unlikely as Qatar has sought an end to the blockade as a condition for talks,
and the Saudis and their allies are insisting these demands are absolute and
non-negotiable.